Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Today I picked up a half beef for our family. It is from a different family and was processed by a different locker (Hoeslys in New Glarus, WI) so I'm very interested in seeing how the numbers work out compared to our previous farmer. This steer was a Piedmontese, which is a breed we've never had before and we've heard good things about their meat. He was grass fed and finished, which is important to our family. We hope this will last us 2 years like the last half did, but with the way the kids are growing only time will tell!

We paid the Meyers family $2.70/lb hanging weight which for our half was 405 pounds. Total=$1093.50
We paid Hoesly's $.49/lb for cut, wrap, feeze and $35 for our part of the kill fee. Total = $233.45

We asked for everything to be bone in and asked for the 'odd bits' as well. All steaks were 3/4" cut, 2 per pack and roasts were about 2 lbs per pack. Here's how it broke down.

Also asked for fat (for rendering into tallow) and long bones (for stock and dogs) which yielded 12 pounds of bones and 7.5 pounds of fat. These numbers aren't in the take home weight totals.

So the total spent was $1326.95
Total take home weight (without bones and fat) was 292.5 pounds.
This means the conversion of hanging weight (405) to take home weight (292.5) was 72.2%

I'm not exactly sure was our last half was, but I know it was under 65% and the quarter before that was right at 65%. We were told this breed carries less fat than most and since we got a pure bred we wondered if we'd have good conversion and we did! More meat and bones mean more meals and stock!

So the final number we always want to know is what did I pay for this meat per pound...$4.54 is the answer. That includes all the great steak cuts and also includes the liver (we aren't big fans, but we'll either figure it out or feed it to the dogs). For the quality of beef we are buying I think it is a good price. There is no way we'd get the same price on average buying by the piece, even at the grocery store it seems these days and I don't really care to eat the meat sold there.

Thank you Meyers for raising grass fed beef and thank you Hoesly's for processing for small farmers. We are grateful to them and glad we can afford to buy beef this way.

About Me

I'm a frugal gal, married to Mike and Mommy to my three little ones. Amazingly they are already 6, 4 and 2.5! I enjoy all of the titles those things give me and no word is sweeter than "Mama" right now. We are not your typical family and take great pride in that!
Contact me at Heather@pagesbyheather.com